McCaughey likes team approach in HPA Department
An opportunity to work closely with students and fellow faculty members attracted one of the HPA department’s newest faculty members to Penn State.
Deirdre McCaughey, M.B.A., will begin teaching courses this spring. She came to Penn State from Alberta, Canada, where she will soon complete her doctoral degree in management from the University of Manitoba. Her dissertation focuses on workplace safety. She also holds a master of business administration degree and a bachelor of medical rehabilitation degree (physical therapy).
McCaughey’s research interests center on knowledge transfer and utilization in health services. Among her accomplishments, she is proud of two federal doctoral fellowships she secured, one through the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation and the other through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
She believes her work and educational experience, which includes working in the private sector and practicing as a physical therapist, will benefit Penn State students. In addition, her health care knowledge and experience with working in a country that offers universal health care should be of great interest to HPA students and will likely spark lively discussions in the classroom.
“I have real world management experience, and I plan to bring that into the classroom,” McCaughey says. “I can teach students how business functions, and I can also share my health care background. I hope to offer the students a different perspective on health care.”
McCaughey learned more about Penn State while attending a professional development workshop last year at the Academy of Management’s annual conference. One of the workshop’s speakers especially piqued McCaughey’s interest.
Dr. Diane Brannon, professor of health policy and administration at Penn State, spoke to the group about mentoring and how she and other professors in the HPA department work closely with newer faculty members to develop teaching and research strategies.
“I kept thinking that Diane Brannon’s comments were very, very interesting,” McCaughey recalls. “The faculty’s commitment to mentoring and the success of their junior faculty…this really gave me a nice feeling that this would be a great place to work.
“I am really excited about being here, and I am looking forward to working with the staff, faculty, and students in the HPA department,” she says. “Living in this part of the U.S. is going to be a really cool experience.”